Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Today, we learnt about, tensile material testing, the scanning electron microscopy and composite material testing. For tensile material testing, we applied tension on different materials such as mild steel, polyethylene bars and PMMA to see when they would snap and to see the ultimate tensile strength.From this, we learnt that that the different density and atom arrangement would affect the properties of the material. For the Scanning Electron Microscope, we learnt the procedures of how we should use the microscope and we also saw a real SEM in action. For the Composite Material Processing,we made carbon fibre and glass fibre composites. We learnt that even that the carbon fibre sheet was flimsy on it's own, with the matrix which is the epoxy, many sheets can be very hard and sturdy.

I feel that today was a productive and meaningful day as I had learnt many new things. Also, it was enjoyable and interesting considering that we had fun while learning new things. My initial understandings were that Material Science is not important and we just had to pick the correct element or material to create an item. It is actually very important as through Material Science, we are able to choose the properties which are especially suited for an item. From this, I learn that we should not just judge things straight away and classify them as useful or useless without having any prior knowledge of the topic.

Tuesday, 4 June 2013

-The hands on learning and the using of the machines makes the project sound interesting

-I can learn more about properties of materials and how materials function

Plenary Sessions

•Earthquake Research on Coral Reefs of Sumatra

-I have learnt to be interdisciplinary such as using technology while I am engaging in other subjects.This helps me to learn that subjects should not be separated although they are different, thus enabling skills learnt in certain subjects to be shared with others

•IT for Animation

-We need to keep things simple and then perfect it later and everyone can be an inventor.This tells me that we need to keep on aspiring. Also, we do not need to overcomplicate things from the start and we can work on them in the future.

•Innovation Breakthrough in Nano-Science and Nano-Technology

-We need to persevere on if we want to accomplish our goals. If the people had not kept on trying in the past, nano-science and nano-technology might have been possible.